Article excerpt

As Secretary Gates has just said two spies have already spoken,
and spoken bluntly. I wonder what you would expect from a third one.
I'm afraid like an old music box I will speak not very originally
and not something new, because I was asked by Horst to speak about
terrorism and since I'm here for the seventh year in a row, I do
remember, I started speaking about terrorism in 2001 before
September 11. I remember that. Anyway, I'll try to speak bluntly
when you put your questions.

From year to year the civilized world is becoming more and more
concerned about the problems on fighting international terrorism.
These issues are attracting much attention of our international
forum as well. We used to speak about terrorism as a local event,
but since early 1990s it has developed into a worldwide phenomenon.
As a rule, today's terrorist attacks are planned and prepared in one
country, financed in another and carried out in a third one.

It is safe to say that terrorism has transformed into a large-
scale and complex social and political phenomenon of international
life. However, for a variety of reasons, international community has
failed to work out generally recognized legal definition of
terrorism in spite of lengthy debates and discussions on that issue.
In particular, the General Assembly of the United Nations has
adopted a number of resolutions on international terrorism, but
failed to give more or less acceptable definition of terrorism. So,
we're discussing for ten years minimum fighting terrorism and still
there is no definition of it.

The most dangerous tendency in expansion of this threat is that
modern terrorist groups and their sponsors successfully develop,
expand and build up their ideological and propaganda arsenal. In
other words, de facto, they wage an information war against the
world civilization. At that, they aggressively and quite skillfully
take advantage of non-effectiveness and separation of the countries
and the public in counteraction of terrorism.

Russia plays an active role in international counterterrorism
efforts. St. Petersburg G8 Summit chaired by Russia last year made
notable decisions and adopted certain resolutions on
counterterrorism which defined the key directions for present and
perspective interaction in this sphere. Russia has an experience to
share with its partners on how to improve national counterterrorism
legislation. The most important decision in this context is a
creation of national counterterrorism committee which has already
encouraged both more effective counterterrorism actions taken inside
Russia and its wider contribution to international intelligence
cooperation.

There is a strong ground to expect a growing wave of large-scale
terrorist attacks. That is why we face a complicated and
unprecedented dilemma on how to effectively react to those attacks
within the frames of international law and our liberal democratic
values. As a matter of fact, armed forces specially prepared and
equipped to carry out conventional high intensity combat actions are
not always perfect for standoff in armed conflicts involving
criminal and nationalist elements as well as international
terrorism. …